Professores bem-sucedidos no ensino superior: influências na formação, concepções e contribuições

Abstract

An interest in the education and development of university professors is what originated this research qualitative approach, it aims to investigate the main influences upon successful their professional development. In this paper, the successful the one chosen and appointed by his students as the very best in college. The identification of the best professors was achieved ~ending the last year of Fashion, Graphic Design, Multimedia, Environment Management and Hotel Management courses, in a private institution in São Paulo. By filling in a questionnaire, students included the justification for their election. The adopted was then based in the analysis of life stories, with an emphasis on the formation of the profissionals, reported in written narratives by the six professors - the subjects of this paper. The analysis of the results allowed to identified that the mobilized knowledge of such successful professors includes the technical-scientific, critical-reflexive, evaluative, continuing education, collective work, human-interactional, ethical-political and aesthetic-cultural knowledge. All such dimensions are differently organized in each professor - conceived in unique ways - but somehow they are found to be common to all subjects, although not always explicitly. Since each professor has his/her own dinamics, there is no linear profile or defined patterns that could be equally emphasized for all of them. What can be highlighted, though, is that the articulation of such knowledge practice based on principles of interactionist theories, and in authentic, respecfful atic actions, when it comes to their relationship with others. The main knowledge sources for such professors, in other words, the main influences identified in the course of - ~heir professional development, were family, school, education/preparation in the teaching area, experience as a teacher/educator, experience in their specific filed-of-study profession, human interactional knowledge and aesthetic cultural knowledge. Such influences are not - isolated as knowledge sources. Rather, they are interconnected or interrelated. For all of the Involved subjects, teaching was not a profession they planned to perform. However, they currently identify it as a social commitment, once they feel responsible for "forming citizens". Despite the fact that most professors did not have a teaching education, all of them place on the pedagogical aspects of their performance. Finally, they reinforce their conceptions of "formation", teacher-student relationship, education and knowledge, as they report their contribution to new teachers. This paper is deemed to joins forces with those ements to reflections on the formation of professors, teaching-learning process - especially in the university level (who lacks consolidated knowledge)-, successful teaching adult education - once it approaches aspects of the "formation of professors" meaningful to their students (also adults), among others. It aggregates value to the scientific production that already exists, as it approaches educators from contemporary undergraduate courses - unlike previous studies completed more than ten years ago (CUNHA, 1989; PIMENTEL, 1992; ANDRE, 1983) and reinforces or even highligths aspects to the reflection on the "formation of professors" . The main authors used as reference were Placco (2002a), Placco and Silva (2003), Tardif (2002), Masetto (2003) and André(2003)